Pembroke College employed J.R.R. Tolkien when he first held the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon.
Tolkien joined Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1925 after being appointed to the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship. He remained there until 1945, teaching and conducting research in Old English and related fields. During this period he wrote much of The Hobbit and began developing the larger mythology that would support The Lord of the Rings.
In 1945 Tolkien moved to Merton College after becoming Merton Professor of English Language and Literature. That later affiliation is why readers sometimes identify Merton rather than Pembroke with his first Oxford professorship. Both colleges were important in his academic career, but they belong to different stages. Pembroke is also associated with the period when Tolkien’s fiction moved from private invention toward publication and eventual worldwide influence.